ABSTRACT
Depressive symptomatology and depressive disorders are among the most common problems of everyday life. Although they occur at all ages, they are particularly prevalent in women of childbearing age and in mothers of young children (Horwitz, Briggs-Gowan, Storfer-Isser, and Carter, 2009). Considerable evidence demonstrates that parents’ depressive symptomatology places children at risk for a wide range of developmental problems. These include poor language and cognitive development, poor social skills, and high rates of internalizing, externalizing, and other adjustment problems (Goodman and Tully, 2006; Goodman et al., 2011; Hammen, 2009). To a considerable degree, these developmental problems are known to reflect low-competent parenting among parents with depressive symptoms (Elgar, Mills, McGrath, Waschbusch, and Brownridge, 2007; Goodman and Tully, 2006; Joormann, Eugene, and Gotlib, 2009; Leckman-Westin, Cohen, and Stueve, 2009; NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 1999). As depressive symptoms increase, parents tend to become negative, inattentive, intrusive, hostile, insensitive, withdrawn, and both lax and overly controlling in their discipline (Dix and Meunier, 2009; Downey and Coyne, 1990; Goodman, 2007; Lovejoy, Graczyk, O’Hare, and Neuman, 2000). In this chapter, we review what is known about how and why depressive symptoms and depressive disorders in parents influence parenting. We do not attempt to duplicate or extend the considerable work on the developmental problems of children reared by depressed parents. We address, instead, how depressive symptoms affect parents and parenting. We attempt to clarify the forms of parenting depressive symptoms appear to promote, the processes depressive symptoms activate that lead to this parenting, and the conditions that determine when, how, and to what extent depressive symptoms undermine parenting.
